Gentrification And Diversity

Does gentrification destroy diversity? Or does it thrive on it? Boston’s South End, a legendary working-class neighborhood with the largest Victorian brick row house district in the United States and a celebrated reputation for diversity, has become in recent years a flashpoint for the problems of gentrification. It has born witness to the kind of rapid transformation leading to pitched battles over the class and race politics throughout the country and indeed the contemporary world. This subtle study of a storied urban neighborhood reveals the way that upper-middle-class newcomers have positioned themselves as champions of diversity, and how their mobilization around this key concept has reordered class divisions rather than abolished them.

This book examines lived experiences of making, inhabiting and appropriating space, in relation to the upscale commercial gentrification of the Milan Chinatown. It inquires about the significance of diverse neighborhoods as emerging multicultural spaces? Are we talking about neighborhood entrepreneurs providing services and entertainment to create local urban culture, or are we talking about political/economic forces in the commodification of ethnic and cultural diversity? Starting from these questions, this book uses innovative visual ethnography and critical urban research to understand the relationship between community-based entrepreneurs, local politics, residents’ sense of belonging, and patterns of city branding strategies in Milan, the fashion capital of Italy. This book is intended for researchers and students in the fields of sociology, anthropology, urban studies, geography, and urban planning. Additionally, it is appropriate for practitioners in the fields of urban planning, housing policies, and community development.

For long-time residents of Washington, DC’s Shaw/U Street, the neighborhood has become almost unrecognizable in recent years. Where the city’s most infamous open-air drug market once stood, a farmers’ market now sells grass-fed beef and homemade duck egg ravioli. On the corner where AM.PM carryout used to dish out soul food, a new establishment markets its $28 foie gras burger. Shaw is experiencing a dramatic transformation, from “ghetto” to “gilded ghetto,” where white newcomers are rehabbing homes, developing dog parks, and paving the way for a third wave coffee shop on nearly every block. Race, Class, and Politics in the Cappuccino City is an in-depth ethnography of this gilded ghetto. Derek S. Hyra captures here a quickly gentrifying space in which long-time black residents are joined, and variously displaced, by an influx of young, white, relatively wealthy, and/or gay professionals who, in part as a result of global economic forces and the recent development of central business districts, have returned to the cities earlier generations fled decades ago. As a result, America is witnessing the emergence of what Hyra calls “cappuccino cities.” A cappuccino has essentially the same ingredients as a cup of coffee with milk, but is considered upscale, and is double the price. In Hyra’s cappuccino city, the black inner-city neighborhood undergoes enormous transformations and becomes racially “lighter” and more expensive by the year.

Does gentrification destroy diversity? Or does it thrive on it? Boston's South End, a legendary working-class neighborhood with the largest Victorian brick row house district in the United States and a celebrated reputation for diversity, has become in recent years a flashpoint for the problems of gentrification. It has born witness to the kind of rapid transformation leading to pitched battles over the class and race politics throughout the country and indeed the contemporary world. This subtle study of a storied urban neighborhood reveals the way that upper-middle-class newcomers have positioned themselves as champions of diversity, and how their mobilization around this key concept has reordered class divisions rather than abolished them.

This book explores, situates, and discusses the contours of urban inclusivity amidst and beyond the well-researched neoliberal turn in urban governance. While it is generally accepted that urban social issues are susceptible to global woes, these perceptions draw only limited attention to the plurality of interventions that cities undertake—or facilitate—in managing their social turfs. By addressing the apparent lack of theorizations on everyday heterogeneities in urban place-making, especially in non-Western contexts, this book highlights the role of inclusionary practices by different stakeholders as an explicit pattern of urbanization. It does so by focusing on old urban centralities that have an outspoken history in experimenting with inclusivity. The book is guided by two interrelated questions: (1) What particular urban settings promote inclusionary features in contrast to the conspicuous exclusionary mechanisms of market-led urbanization, and (2) how do we conceptualize these features in dialogue with concurrent urban theories that continue to grapple with the structural properties of exclusionary urbanization under the auspices of the neoliberal turn and gentrification? To answer these questions, the chapters provide a rich empirical account of inclusionary initiatives by the city governments, the voluntary organization sector, and informal communities, each revealing a unique new set of spatial approaches to urban inclusivity. The book concludes with the political implications of envisioning urban inclusivity as a negotiatory moment between key stakeholder interests in a capitalist society. Primarily intended for researchers and graduate students in the fields of urban geography, sociology, migration, and welfare studies, the book is also a valuable source for policymakers and practitioners in the fields of social planning and civil society at large.

Gentrification, a process of class neighbourhood upgrading, is being identified in a broader range of urban contexts throughout the world. This book throws new light and evidence to bear on a subject that deeply divides commentators on its worth and social costs given its ability to physically improve areas but also to displace indigenous inhabitants. Gentrification in a Global Perspective brings together the most recent theoretical and empirical research on gentrification at a global scale. Each author gives an overview of gentrification in their country so that each chapter retains a unique approach but tackles a common theme within a shared framework. The main feature of the book is a critical and well-written set of chapters on a process that is currently undergoing a resurgence of interest and one that shows no sign of abating.

Gentrification is transforming cities, small and large, across the country. Though it’s easy to bemoan the diminished social diversity and transformation of commercial strips that often signify a gentrifying neighborhood, determining who actually benefits and who suffers from this nebulous process can be much harder. The full story of gentrification is rooted in large-scale social and economic forces as well as in extremely local specifics—in short, it’s far more complicated than both its supporters and detractors allow. In Newcomers, journalist Matthew L. Schuerman explains how a phenomenon that began with good intentions has turned into one of the most vexing social problems of our time. He builds a national story using focused histories of northwest Brooklyn, San Francisco’s Mission District, and the onetime site of Chicago’s Cabrini-Green housing project, revealing both the commonalities among all three and the place-specific drivers of change. Schuerman argues that gentrification has become a too-easy flashpoint for all kinds of quasi-populist rage and pro-growth boosterism. In Newcomers, he doesn’t condemn gentrifiers as a whole, but rather articulates what it is they actually do, showing not only how community development can turn foul, but also instances when a “better” neighborhood truly results from changes that are good. Schuerman draws no easy conclusions, using his keen reportorial eye to create sharp, but fair, portraits of the people caught up in gentrification, the people who cause it, and its effects on the lives of everyone who calls a city home.

Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Oslo, Everyday Life in the Gentrifying City offers an examination of gentrification from below, exploring the effects of this process upon city neighbourhoods and those that inhabit them, whether residents, business owners and their customers, or local activists. Engaging with recent debates surrounding immigration and the inclusion of ethnic minorities in the city, the book takes up the question of ethnicity and gentrification. It argues for an urban policy that gives up the preoccupation with policies concerning the residential mix and place transformation in favour of empowering its citizens. A lively and engaging analysis, in which theoretical rigour is illuminated with rich interviews and empirical content in order to shed light on the relationship between gentrification, displacement, and integration, Everyday Life in the Gentrifying City will appeal to scholars and students of sociology, geography, anthropology and urban studies.